• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.13B no.3 s.106
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• pp.255-274
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• 2006

Moving object boundary is very important for the accurate segmentation of moving object. We extract the moving object boundary from the moving object edge. But the object boundary shows broken boundaries so we develop a novel boundary linking algorithm to link the broken boundaries. The boundary linking algorithm forms a quadrant around the terminating pixel in the broken boundaries and searches for other terminating pixels to link in concentric circles clockwise within a search radius in the forward direction. The boundary linking algorithm guarantees the shortest distance linking. We register the background from the image sequence using the stationary background filtering. We construct two object masks, one object mask from the boundary linking and the other object mask from the initial moving object, and use these two complementary object masks to segment the moving objects. The main contribution of the proposed algorithms is the development of the novel object boundary linking algorithm for the accurate segmentation. We achieve the accurate segmentation of moving object, the segmentation of multiple moving objects, the segmentation of the object which has a hole within the object, the segmentation of thin objects, and the segmentation of moving objects in the complex background using the novel object boundary linking and the background automatically. We experiment the algorithms using standard MPEG-4 test video sequences and real video sequences of indoor and outdoor environments. The proposed algorithms are efficient and can process 70.20 QCIF frames per second and 19.7 CIF frames per second on the average on a Pentium-IV 3.4GHz personal computer for real-time object-based processing.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.15B no.6
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• pp.575-584
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• 2008

According to the network condition, the communication network overload could be occurred when media transmitting. Many researches are being carried out to lessen the network overload, such as the filtering, load distributing, frame dropping and many other methods. Among these methods, one of effective method is frame dropping that reduces specified video frames for bandwidth diminution. B frames are dropped and then I, P frames are dropped according to dependency among the frames in frame dropping. This paper proposes a scheme for protecting copyrights by encryption, when we apply frame dropping to reduce bandwidth of media following MPEG-4 file format. We designed two kinds of frame dropping: first one stores and then sends the dropped files and the other drops frames in real-time when transmitting. We designed three kinds of encryption methods in which DES algorithm is used to encrypt MPEG-4 data: macro block encryption in I-VOP, macro block and motion vector encryption in P-VOP, and macro block and motion vector encryption in I, P-VOP. Based on these three methods, we implemented a digital right management solution for MPEG-4 data streaming. We compared the results of dropping, encryption, decryption and quality of video sequences to select an optimal method, and there is no noticeable difference between the video sequences recovered after frame dropping and the ones recovered without frame dropping. The best performance in encryption and decryption of frames was obtained when we apply the macro block and motion vector encryption in I, P-VOP.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.2 no.8
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• pp.579-588
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• 2013

This paper proposes an effective watermarking approach for copyright protection of fire video images. The proposed watermarking approach efficiently utilizes the inherent characteristics of fire data with respect to color and texture by using a gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) and fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering. GLCM is used to generate a texture feature dataset by computing energy and homogeneity properties for each candidate fire image block. FCM is used to segment color of the fire image and to select fire texture blocks for embedding watermarks. Each selected block is then decomposed into a one-level wavelet structure with four subbands [LL, LH, HL, HH] using a discrete wavelet transform (DWT), and LH subband coefficients with a gain factor are selected for embedding watermark, where the visibility of the image does not affect. Experimental results show that the proposed watermarking approach achieves about 48 dB of high peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and 1.6 to 2.0 of low M-singular value decomposition (M-SVD) values. In addition, the proposed approach outperforms conventional image watermarking approach in terms of normalized correlation (NC) values against several image processing attacks including noise addition, filtering, cropping, and JPEG compression.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.17B no.1
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• pp.47-54
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• 2010

Old archived film shows two major defects: line scratch and blobs. In this paper, we present a design and implementation of an automatic video restoration system for line scratches observed in archived film. We use autoregressive (AR) image model because we can make stochastic and specifically autoregressive image generation process with our PAST-PRESENT model and Sampling Pattern. We designed locality maximizing scanning pattern, which can generate nearly stationary time-like series of pixels, which is a strong requirement for a stochastic series to be autoregressive. The sampled pixel series undergoes filtering and model fitting using Durbin-Levinson algorithm before interpolation process. We designed three-stage film restoration system, which includes (1) film acquisition from VHS tapes, (2) simple line scratch detection and restoration, and (3) manual blob identification and sophisticated inpainting scheme. We implemented film acquisition and simple inpainting scheme on Texas Instruments DSP board TMS320DM642 EVM, and implemented our AR inpainting scheme on PC for sophisticated restoration. We experimented our scheme with two old Korean films: "Viva Freedom" and "Robot Tae-Kwon-V", and the experimental results show that our scheme improves Bertalmio's scheme for subjective quality (MOS), objective quality (PSNR), and especially restoration ratio (RR), which reflects how much similar to the manual inpainting results.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.9-20
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• 2005

Recently, the MPEG-7 standard a multimedia content description standard is wide]y used for content based image/video retrieval systems. However, since the descriptors standardized in MPEG-7 are usually multidimensional and the problem called 'Curse of dimensionality', previously proposed indexing methods(for example, multidimensional indexing methods, dimensionality reduction methods, filtering methods, and so on) could not be used to effectively index the multimedia database represented in MPEG-7. This paper proposes an efficient multimedia data indexing mechanism reflecting the characteristics of MPEG-7 visual descriptors. In the proposed indexing mechanism, the descriptor is transformed into a histogram of some attributes. By representing the value of each bin as a binary number, the histogram itself that is a visual descriptor for the object in multimedia database could be represented as a bit string. Bit strings for all objects in multimedia database are collected to form an index file, bitmap index, in the proposed indexing mechanism. By XORing them with the descriptors for query object, the candidate solutions for similarity search could be computed easily and they are checked again with query object to precisely compute the similarity with exact metric such as Ll-norm. These indexing and searching mechanisms are efficient because the filtering process is performed by simple bit-operation and it reduces the search space dramatically. Upon experimental results with more than 100,000 real images, the proposed indexing and searching mechanisms are about IS times faster than the sequential searching with more than 90% accuracy.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.41-49
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• 2008

H.264/AVC supports variable block motion compensation, multiple reference images, 1/4-pixel motion vector accuracy, and in-loop deblocking filter, compared with the existing compression technologies. While these coding technologies are major functions of compression rate improvement, they lead to high complexity at the same time. For the H.264 video coding technology to be actually applied on low-end / low-bit rates terminals more extensively, it is essential to improve tile coding speed. Currently the deblocking filter that can improve the moving picture's subjective image quality to a certain degree is used on low-end terminals to a limited extent due to computational complexity. In this paper, a performance improvement method of the deblocking filter that efficiently reduces the blocking artifacts occurred during the compression of low-bit rates digital motion pictures is suggested. In the method proposed in this paper, the image's spatial correlational characteristics are extracted by using the variable block information of motion compensation; the filtering is divided into 4 modes according to the characteristics, and adaptive filtering is executed in the divided regions. The proposed deblocking method reduces the blocking artifacts, prevents excessive blurring effects, and improves the performance about $30{\sim}40%$ compared with the existing method.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.12B no.3 s.99
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• pp.223-232
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• 2005

In this paper, we propose a novel post-filtering algorithm with low computational complexity that improves the visual quality of decoded images using block boundary classification and simple adaptive filter (SAF). At first, each block boundary is classified into smooth or complex sub-region. And for smooth-smooth sub-regions, the existence of blocking artifacts is determined using blocky strength. And simple adaptive filtering is processed in each block boundary area. The proposed method processes adaptively, that is, a nonlinear 1-D 8-tap filter is applied to smooth-smooth sub-regions with blocking artifacts, and for smooth-complex or complex-smooth sub-regions, a nonlinear 1-D variant filter is applied to block boundary pixels so as to reduce the blocking and ringing artifacts. And for complex-complex sub-regions, a nonlinear 1-D 2-tap filter is only applied to adjust two block boundary pixels so as to preserve the image details. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm produced better results than those of conventional algorithms both subjective and objective viewpoints.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.29 no.8C
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• pp.1113-1124
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• 2004

In this paper, we proposed a hardware(H/W) structure which can compress and recontruct the input image in real time operation and implemented it into a FPGA platform using VHDL(VHSIC Hardware Description Language). All the image processing element to process both compression and reconstruction in a FPGA were considered each of them was mapped into H/W with the efficient structure for FPGA. We used the DWT(discrete wavelet transform) which transforms the data from spatial domain to the frequency domain, because use considered the motion JPEG2000 as the application. The implemented H/W is separated to both the data path part and the control part. The data path part consisted of the image processing blocks and the data processing blocks. The image processing blocks consisted of the DWT Kernel fur the filtering by DWT, Quantizer/Huffman Encoder, Inverse Adder/Buffer for adding the low frequency coefficient to the high frequency one in the inverse DWT operation, and Huffman Decoder. Also there existed the interface blocks for communicating with the external application environments and the timing blocks for buffering between the internal blocks The global operations of the designed H/W are the image compression and the reconstruction, and it is operated by the unit of a field synchronized with the A/D converter. The implemented H/W used the 69%(16980) LAB(Logic Array Block) and 9%(28352) ESB(Embedded System Block) in the APEX20KC EP20K600CB652-7 FPGA chip of ALTERA, and stably operated in the 70MHz clock frequency. So we verified the real time operation of 60 fields/sec(30 frames/sec).

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.58-65
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• 2002

In order to reduce blocking artifacts in inter-frame coded images, we propose a new image restoration algorithm, which directly processes differential images before reconstruction. We note that blocking artifact in inter-frame coded images is caused by both 8$\times$8 DCT and 16$\times$16 macroblock based motion compensation, while that of intra-coded images is caused by 8$\times$8 DCT only. According to the observation, we Propose a new degradation model for differential images and the corresponding restoration algorithm that utilizes additional constraints and convex sets for discontinuity inside blocks. The proposed restoration algorithm is a modified version of standard regularization that incorporate!; spatially adaptive lowpass filtering with consideration of edge directions by utilizing a part of DCT coefficients. Most of video coding standard adopt a hybrid structure of block-based motion compensation and block discrete cosine transform (BDCT). By this reason, blocking artifacts are occurred on both block boundary and block interior For more complete removal of both kinds of blocking artifacts, the restored differential image must satisfy two constraints, such as, directional discontinuities on block boundary and block interior Those constraints have been used for defining convex sets for restoring differential images.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.637-637
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• 1997

In this paper, format conversion filters are proposed, which have advantages in hardware implementation compared to the ones proposed in MPEG-4 Video Verification Model. since each coefficients of the proposed filters is constrained to have less than two non-zero digits in minimal signed digit representation, multiplication of input and the coefficient can be implemented by a single adder. As a result, the proposed filters have advantages in hardware complexity and speed, compared to the filters which are usually implemented by integer multiplier or carry save adders. Six kinds of filters are proposed in MPEG-4 Video Verification Model for size conversion of 2:1, 4:1, 5:3 and 5:6. We design 5 filters for the same purpose and compare the performance. The remaining one is very simple to implement. For comparing the filtering performance, we first compare the results of sine wave frequency conversion as an indirect but meaningful comparison. Second. We compute the PSNR of the images obtained from the proposed filters and the ones proposed by MPEG, with reference to the images obtained by using double precision arithmetic and high order filter. The results show that the performance of the proposed filters is almost the same as that of the filters proposed by MPEG. In conclusion, the peroformance of the proposed filters is comparable to that of the ones in MPEG-4, while requiring lower hardware complexity and providing high operating speed.